A respectful but blistering new report
on the challenges of the California Department of Transportation holds
promise for a bike-design breakthrough in the country’s largest state,
experts say.

Within the next four months, according to the report commissioned last
May by Gov. Jerry Brown, the state should end its “archaic” control over
bike facilities on local streets and fully endorse the NACTO bike
design guide that recommends tools like protected bike lanes, on-street
color and dedicated bike signals in urban areas.

Too frequently, SSTI said, the state’s municipalities have tried “to
implement modern design, only to be thwarted by the state and its dated,
rigid design policies.”

In the somewhat longer term, Caltrans should perform a “complete
overhaul” of its design manuals to allow more flexible street design
that supports Californians’ trend toward driving their cars less, even
as the state’s economy has grown.

The longtime link between economic grown and increased driving has
been broken in California since the early 1990s. Source: SSTI report.

Caltrans director welcomes recommendations

The recommendations were “greeted enthusiastically by Caltrans Director
Malcolm Dougherty, who said the report’s suggestions dovetailed nicely
with the 'reforms already underway,’” AllGov.com reported Friday.

Other experts added their approval.

“When Caltrans first put in the requirement that cities follow their
Highway Design Manual for bikeways, even on local streets, it was for
good reason,” said Seleta Reynolds of the San Francisco Metropolitan
Transportation Agency. “The state of the practice around designing for
bikes was just developing, and it was a reliable way to make sure that
people wouldn’t build sub-standard facilities. These days, though, that
need no longer exists.”

Sean Co, an active transportation planner for the Bay Area’s
metropolitan planning organization, said he hoped the report would help
give Caltrans the sense of mission and meaning it enjoyed in the 1960s.

“My dad used to work for Caltrans and he said in the early days they
had a clear mission to build the state highway network,” Co said. ”The
report indicates that they are struggling to find what their current
mission should be. I think they should focus on being a mobility
department that includes all modes of transportation.”

Rising hope for reform

As the report noted, the country’s largest state transportation agency
has already seen “reams of reports and recommendations that purport to
address new policy demands” and that “many well-meaning initiatives have
simply withered.”

But with California cities and transportation, business and
environmental advocates increasingly focused on moving Caltrans in a new
direction — for example, the California Bicycle Coalition already has a
bill in the works to remove bike facilities from state oversight —
reform advocates inside and outside of government are hopeful.

Indeed, one of the report’s final recommendations about Caltrans reform
wasn’t actually for Caltrans. It was that everyone else in California
needed to give Caltrans a hand.

“Because even the best managers at Caltrans tend to be a product of
that culture—and because significant hurdles to change come from outside
the department—it appears that modernizing is unlikely to occur simply
through Caltrans’ own work, but will require action by CalSTA, the
legislature, and other agencies and stakeholders.”